Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Switching from Http to Https, but what about images and image link juice?
-
Hi Ya'll.
I'm transitioning our http version website to https. Important question:
Do images have to have 301 redirects? If so, how and where?
Please send me a link or explain best practices.
Best,
Shawn
-
Shawn124, whenever you move from HTTP to HTTPs, you'll need to set up the 301 permanent redirects for pages on the site only. The other elements, such as images, JavaScript (if they're external files), and .CSS files will need to be changed only in the code so that they reference the new HTTPs URLs, and not HTTP.
If you load an HTTP element (such as an image that uses the full URL in it's reference rather than the image filename only) on an HTTPs URL, then the browser will give you an error. So generally you need to do two things:
-
set up 301 Permanent Redirect for the page URLs.
-
search the entire website for all references to HTTP and change them to HTTPs (unless you're linking out to an external site).
If the site is in WordPress, you can use the Search and Replace plugin to replace it all at once in the database.
-
-
If you 301 redirect all HTTP URLs to HTTPS On the origin server,
To Move the origin server the HTTP to HTTPS On the origin server your redirects on your images will follow
#1
NGINX
Add the following to your Nginx config.
server { listen 80; server_name domain.com www.domain.com; return 301 https://domain.com$request_uri; }
Apache
Add the following to your
.htaccess
file.RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
(TOOL Apache htaccess to NGINX config tool https://winginx.com/en/htaccess)
#2
Search and replace the old HTTP:// URLs to New HTTPS://
http://mydomain.com
tohttps://mydomain.com
http://www.mydomain.com
tohttps://www.mydomain.com
Use CLI or https://interconnectit.com/products/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/
#3
Alert Google that you are migrating to HTTPS https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en
You will have no issue with your images.
Your link juice will flow as it did before because Google is no longer penalizing multiple redirects (So they SAY BUT don't over use redirects) keep them to a minimum, please.
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/the-zen-guide-to-https-configuration/
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/https-dilemma-security-seo/
#4
If on WordPress using proxy or just have insecure content use
Really Simple SSL: https://wordpress.org/plugins/really-simple-ssl/
Your insecure content is fixed by replacing all HTTP:// URLs with HTTPS://, except links to other external domains. Everything is done dynamically.
If using a Photos on a WAF or Pull CDN Force HTTPS
Connections#5
For example, if you're using a CloudFlare for Photos? You would use page rules to force a 301 redirect HTTPS
https://tools.keycdn.com/curl see #9 in https://www.maxcdn.com/one/tutorial/edge-rules-recipes/
#6
301's will not lose link juice see:
https://moz.com/blog/301-redirection-rules-for-seo
#7
Test using https://www.deepcrawl.com/ & or https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
(For a larger picture of the image below about redirect rule changing and link juice click on this URL http://i.imgur.com/vqyT6gm.jpg )
#8
If still needing tips or help read below.
Do images have to have 301 redirects? Yes
Citing:
http://searchengineland.com/http-https-seos-guide-securing-website-246940
"Making the switch from HTTP to HTTPS
- Start with a test server. This is important because it lets you get everything right and test without screwing it up in real time. Even if you are doing the switch without a test server, there’s almost nothing you can do that you can’t recover from, but it’s still best practice to have a plan and have everything tested ahead of time.
- Crawl the current website so that you know the current state of the site and for comparison purposes.
- Read any documentation regarding your server or CDN for HTTPS. I run into lots of fun CDN issues, but it can also be straightforward.
- Get a security certificate and install on the server. This will vary depending on your hosting environment and server setup too much for me to go into details, but the process is usually well-documented.
- Update references in content. This can usually be done with a search-and-replace in the database. You’ll want to update all references to internal links to use HTTPS or relative paths.
- Update references in templates. Again, depending on how you deploy, this might be done with Git or simply Notepad++, but you’ll want to make sure references to scripts, images, links and so on are either using HTTPS or relative paths.
- Update canonical tags. Most CMS systems will take care of this for you when you make the switch, but double-check, because that’s not always the case.
- **Update hreflang tags **if your website uses them, or any other tags such as OG tags for that matter. Again, most CMS systems will take care of this, but it’s best to QA it just in case.
- Update any plugins/modules/add-ons to make sure nothing breaks and that nothing contains insecure content. I commonly see internal site search and forms missed.
- CMS-specific settings may need to be changed. For major CMS systems, these are usually well-documented in migration guides.
- Crawl the site to make sure you didn’t miss any links and nothing is broken. You can export any insecure content in one of the Screaming Frog reports if this is the crawler you are using.
- Make sure any external scripts that are called support HTTPS.
- Force HTTPS with redirects. This will depend on your server and configuration but is well-documented for Apache, Nginx, and IIS.
- Update old redirects currently in place (and while you’re at it, take back your lost links from redirects that haven’t been done over the years). I mentioned during the Q&A portion of the Technical SEO Panel at SMX West that I’ve never had a site drop in rankings or traffic when switching to HTTPS, and a lot of people questioned me on this. Due diligence on redirects and redirect, chains are likely the difference, as this is what I see messed up the most when troubleshooting migrations.
- Crawl the old URLs for any broken redirects or any redirect chains, which you can find in a report with Screaming Frog.
- **Update sitemaps **to use HTTPS versions of the URLs.
- **Update your robots.txt file **to include your new sitemap.
- Enable HSTS. This tells the browser always to use HTTPS, which eliminates a server-side check and makes your website load faster. This can also cause confusion at times, since the redirect will show as 307. It could have a 301 or a 302 behind it, though, and you may need to clear your browser cache to see which.
- Enable OCSP stapling. This enables a server to check if a security certificate is revoked instead of a browser, which keeps the browser from having to download or cross-reference with the issuing certificate authority.
- Add HTTP/2 support.
- Add the HTTPS version of your site to all the search engine versions of webmaster tools that you use and load the new sitemap with HTTPS to them. This is important, as I’ve seen traffic drops misdiagnosed because they saw the traffic in the HTTP profile drop, when the traffic in reality moved to the HTTPS profile. Another note for this is that you do not need to use the Change of Address Tool when switching from HTTP to HTTPS.
- Update your disavow file if you had one for the HTTPS version.
- Update your URL parameter settings if you had these configured.
- Go live!
- In your analytics platform, make sure you update the default URL if one is required to ensure that you are tracking HTTPS properly, and add notes about the change so that you know when it occurred for future reference.
- Update your social share counts. There’s a lot of gotchas to this, in that some of the networks will transfer the counts through their APIs, while others will not. There are already guides for this around if you are interested in keeping your share counts.
- Update any paid media, email or marketing automation campaigns to use the HTTPS versions of the URLs.
- Update any other tools such as A/B testing software, heat maps and keyword tracking to use the HTTPS versions of the URLs.
- Monitor everything during the migration and check, double-check and triple-check to make sure everything is going smoothly. There are so many places where things can go wrong, and it seems like there are usually several issues that come up in any switch to HTTPS.
One question I’m often asked is if incoming links should be cleaned up. This is a tremendous amount of outreach and effort. If you have time, then sure; but most likely you’re busy with other things, and I don’t feel it’s necessary. However, you should update the links on any properties that you control, such as social profiles."
** you asked for the best links here are what you need**
- https://yoast.com/dev-blog/move-website-https-ssl/
- https://www.semrush.com/blog/how-to-survive-a-website-migration-semrushchat/?l=en
- https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/how-to-redirect-all-traffic-to-https-non-www
- https://moz.com/community/q/301-redirect-all-pictures-when-moving-to-a-new-site
- Link juice
** examplesI have put a lot more below**
- https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/how-to-redirect-all-traffic-to-https-non-www
- https://kinsta.com/knowledgebase/redirect-http-to-https/
- https://bjornjohansen.no/redirect-to-https-with-nginx
Unless you have to modify whatever system it is powering them, do you have a CDN? Or using something like AWS S3?
If so your images should move with the rest of the site. If you're posting them on a content delivery network or an AWS S3 whatever it is you must redirect that as well.
- https://yoast.com/dev-blog/move-website-https-ssl/
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en&ref_topic=6029673
- **https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection **
- https://moz.com/community/q/301-redirect-all-pictures-when-moving-to-a-new-site
juice will not be lost long is you tell Google your moving the site see the URL below for how to redirect
Some of the systems will have buttons where you'd just click HTTPS others will require you to put the code into the system. I have posted the code below for Nginx as well as Apache.
Redirect from HTTP to https
This last bit will help you tremendously when you’ve not updated every single link on your site yet. You can just add a straight server level redirect from HTTP to https. In NGINX, we do this by having two servers defined in our config, the “right” one; that listens on port 443 and a simple one that listens on port 80 (standard HTTP) and has just this:
server {
listen 80;
server_name yoursite.com www.yoursite.com;
return 301 https://yoursite.com$request_uri;
}This seems to be the fastest way of doing this in NGINX, in Apache you’d do something like this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]- Tools
- http://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/nonwww-to-www/
- https://yoast.com/research/permalink-helper.php
- http://www.contentforest.com/seo-tools/url-redirect-generator
- https://donatstudios.com/RewriteRule_Generator
- http://www.rapidtables.com/web/tools/redirect-generator.htm
How to force SSL with. htaccess
If you want to force your entire website to go through https, you can add these rules to your .htaccess file:
| |
RewriteEngineOnRewriteCond%{SERVER_PORT}80RewriteRule^(.*)$https://yourdomain.com/$1 [R,L]
|
If your site is in a subfolder, use this code:
| |
RewriteEngineOnRewriteCond%{SERVER_PORT}80RewriteCond%{REQUEST_URI}folderRewriteRule^(.*)$https://yourdomain.com/folder/$1 [R,L]
|
Only replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain name.
Test with
- https://varvy.com/tools/redirects/
- https://varvy.com/pagespeed/hsts.html
- https://varvy.com/mobile/mobile-redirects.html
- http://searchengineland.com/http-https-seos-guide-securing-website-246940
Hope this helps,
Thomas
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Footer no follow links
Just interested to know when putting links at the foot of the site some people use no-follow tags. I'm thinking about internal pages and social networks. Is this still necessary or is it an old-fashioned idea?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Null Alt Image Tags vs Missing Alt Image Tags
Hi, Would it be better for organic search to have a null alt image tag programatically added to thousands of images without alt image tags or just leave them as is. The option of adding tailored alt image tags to thousands of images is not possible. Is having sitewide alt image tags really important to organic search overall or what? Right now, probably 10% of the sites images have alt img tags. A huge number of those images are pages that aren Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
If Robots.txt have blocked an Image (Image URL) but the other page which can be indexed has this image, how is the image treated?
Hi MOZers, This probably is a dumb question but I have a case where the robots.tags has an image url blocked but this image is used on a page (lets call it Page A) which can be indexed. If the image on Page A has an Alt tags, then how is this information digested by crawlers? A) would Google totally ignore the image and the ALT tags information? OR B) Google would consider the ALT tags information? I am asking this because all the images on the website are blocked by robots.txt at the moment but I would really like website crawlers to crawl the alt tags information. Chances are that I will ask the webmaster to allow indexing of images too but I would like to understand what's happening currently. Looking forward to all your responses 🙂 Malika
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika11 -
Link Brokers Yes or No?
We have a client who has asked us to talk to link brokers to speed up the back linking process. Although I've been aware of them for ages I have never openly discussed the possible use of 'buying' links or engaging in that part of the industry. Do they have a place in SEO and if so what is the MOZ communities thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Do 404s really 'lose' link juice?
It doesn't make sense to me that a 404 causes a loss in link juice, although that is what I've read. What if you have a page that is legitimate -- think of a merchant oriented page where you sell an item for a given merchant --, and then the merchant closes his doors. It makes little sense 5 years later to still have their merchant page so why would removing them from your site in any way hurt your site? I could redirect forever but that makes little sense. What makes sense to me is keeping the page for a while with an explanation and options for 'similar' products, and then eventually putting in a 404. I would think the eventual dropping out of the index actually REDUCES the overall link juice (ie less pages), so there is no harm in using a 404 in this way. It also is a way to avoid the site just getting bigger and bigger and having more and more 'bad' user experiences over time. Am I looking at it wrong? ps I've included this in 'link building' because it is related in a sense -- link 'paring'.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
Effects of having both http and https on my website
You are able to view our website as either http and https on all pages. For example: You can type "http://mywebsite.com/index.html" and the site will remain as http: as you navigate the site. You can also type "https://mywebsite.com/index.html" and the site will remain as https: as you navigate the site. My question is....if you can view the entire site using either http or https, is this being seen as duplicate content/pages? Does the same hold true with "www.mywebsite.com" and "mywebsite.com"? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rexjoec1 -
Link Research Tools - Detox Links
Hi, I was doing a little research on my link profile and came across a tool called "LinkRessearchTools.com". I bought a subscription and tried them out. Doing the report they advised a low risk but identified 78 Very High Risk to Deadly (are they venomous?) links, around 5% of total and advised removing them. They also advised of many suspicious and low risk links but these seem to be because they have no knowledge of them so default to a negative it seems. So before I do anything rash and start removing my Deadly links, I was wondering if anyone had a). used them and recommend them b). recommend detoxing removing the deadly links c). would there be any cases in which so called Deadly links being removed cause more problems than solve. Such as maintaining a normal looking profile as everyone would be likely to have bad links etc... (although my thinking may be out on that one...). What do you think? Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NaescentAdam0 -
Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search
Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos. When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed. The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such: domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results. This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent: * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos? I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona0